


Dear Romeo

by jeonseolbaozi (orphan_account)



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Friendship probs, Gender, LGBTQ Themes, Loneliness, Love, M/M, No Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-23 14:01:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21082175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/jeonseolbaozi
Summary: Like the beginning of a dozen cliche roman stories, Baekhyun lives next to a cute boy. It's summer, and they're bored.But Chanyeol hates cliches, and Baekhyun hates romance.Fortunately this is not a love story.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> WARNINGS: 
> 
> 🔹 We have depression. Anxiety. Loneliness. Hate. Sadness. 
> 
> 🔹 Characters sometimes can curse 🙊

> _I have a new philosophy. I’m only going to dread one thing at a time._
> 
> _-**Charles Schulz**_
> 
> * * *

**1**

**TRUTH **

The affliction that consumed me was summer, and its symptoms were irritability, loneliness, and fever. There was no known cure.

"It’s only been a week." My mom reminded me, trying to be helpful. "Maybe you should get a job."

Maybe I should. I hated summer, so getting paid to waste it slaving away in some minimum wage job might be wise. I told my mom this. She fixed me with a look and replied, "Don’t be like _that_, Baekhyun."

I was like _that_.

"Can I at least turn the A/C on before I die of heat stroke?" I grumbled, pouring myself a glass of water. Usually I timed leaving my room to avoid her, but she was working so silently at the kitchen table that I hadn’t heard her from upstairs. I was never allowed to escape Kim without communication.

"No." She told me, looking up from her paperwork. "We’re on a spending hiatus. No spending money for the next two weeks."

That didn’t alarm me. This was something she said roughly once a month, and stuck to for about two days. "Really." I commented, pulling open the refrigerator. "So a bag of spinach, a half a gallon of milk, a block of cheese, and various condiments are going to last us for two weeks?"

I was being dramatic. She knew it. "Yes." My mom answered.

With a half shrug, I shut the door. "Okay."

Kim looked up. She leaned back a little, released her long, black hair from its messy bun, and assumed the Mom Look. "You’re angry."

"I’m not." I replied as I edged towards the doorway like a baseball player trying to steal a base. This was why I avoided her. Conversations, confrontations… it was a thin line with my mom.

Kim took off her reading glasses and set them on her paperwork, then stood. I considered making a run for it, but a moment of hesitation was all she needed to round the counter and face me. "You’ve seemed off ever since you came home from college. I thought you had friends there?"

"I do." Or I _did_. They were the kind of “friends” that were great to call up at 2AM to drink and smoke weed, but by fall they wouldn’t even remember my name. It was a blessing and a curse, more one than the other. I couldn’t tell which.

"So you just don’t want to be home, is that it?"

Talking with my mom was like an interrogation; she’d fire questions off, file the answers away for future analyzing, then quote them back to me as ammunition. Living with a lawyer was rough when I hated being asked questions. Whether those two were related was probably something worth analyzing.

"No." I answered. I prayed to every dead god that she’d let it drop.

She didn’t. "Then what’s wrong?" After an excruciating several seconds where I took slow sips of my water and avoided eye contact, it became clear I wasn’t going to respond. "Maybe you should go out with your friends."

"What friends?" I mumbled before my brain could warn me against saying anything that enabled the continuing of this conversation. Confrontation.

Kim gave me a weird look. Oh, concern. She was concerned. "What about Taeyeon? She used to practically live here, but I haven’t seen her since last year. Are you still friend with her?"

What a question. There was no reason for Kim to expect a year apart to destroy a lifetime of friendship. There was no reason for me to expect it either.

"I thought you had work you’re supposed to be doing." I deflected. My mom was no idiot; she knew I was avoiding the question. I left before she could call me on it, heading to my room and shutting the door in relief. Alone with my thoughts once again, what a life.

I set the water on my desk and flipped open my laptop. Taeyeon's Twitter profile was already open, her blinding smile directed at me from that little profile picture of her in Busan Tower. I only knew where that was taken because I had been there too. I had stood next to her, her slender arm slung across my shoulders, her gorgeous blonde hair blowing in my face, her smile eclipsing my existence. And I hadn’t minded at all. That was the miracle of it.

All you could see of me was the shoulder of my black jacket and a straight, simple short hair. My face was out of the cropped frame. I didn’t blame her; next to her, I looked like someone she’d pulled off the street for a photograph of her helping the homeless.

My eyes drifted again to her latest post, from almost a week ago.

**Kim Taeyeon**

_So excited to be back home for summer! Can’t wait to catch up with all my friends ✌️_

  
A week, and my phone still sat silent on my desk, a dead weight. I don’t know what I expected. Maybe a text from my best friend of eighteen years? Maybe a “_hey_,” a “_how are you?_,” a “_wanna get coffee?_” I hated waiting for her to text, and I hated hoping she would. After the way we left things, I wasn’t sure I even wanted to talk to her, or how awkward it would be, but I couldn’t help but stare at that little screen and hope it would light up.

I hated her. I hated myself. I hated a lot of things.

Sighing, I closed the tab. My second floor room served as a nice pocket of heat that was boiling me alive. My windows were as far open as they would go, but there was no breeze to flush out the hot air and replace it with the cool of the evening. I peeled myself off the leather desk chair and flung myself on the bed.

Summer. Summer meant plenty of time to indulge in my favorite pastime of sleeping, and an equal amount of discomfort while trying to do so. The sweat formed on my skin in record time, dampening the sheets beneath me. I hated summer.

It was rebellion that drove me outside. Rebellion against the heat, rebellion against my mom’s war on air conditioning, rebellion against the stifling cage I’d made my room into. Outside, I was free - free to do anything I wanted. If only I had something I wanted to do.

I sat under a tree. I shredded some grass, killed a few ants with my heel, leaned back against the rough bark and thought about life. That lasted only a few minutes until I decided it was better to think about nothing. It’s almost always better to think about nothing.

My neighbors were loud, but it didn’t annoy me. It wasn’t often that they had parties, and at least their music was good.

"_Ophelia_" drifted across the night, and I closed my eyes, tapping my foot with the beat. It was oddly relaxing, listening to the music and the indistinguishable chatter of people having fun at a party I was separate from. On another day, I might have been jealous; I might have wanted to join them. But today, being alone was the only way to stave off the loneliness.

I think I had almost fallen asleep when a voice woke me up. It was fully dark, and the only light came from the house next door.

"I told her I didn’t want to do long distance." A boy was saying to another on the sidewalk.

The second one had his back to me, and I could see the speaker’s face over his head. The shorter one replied, "That’s fair, though. How’d she take it?"

"Two broken plates, a ripped up t-shirt, and this." He said, holding up his arm, "Later, I’m free of a girlfriend." There was a smile in his voice.

The short guy huffed a laugh and shook his head. "Why do you always date psychos?"

"Because I haven’t found a nice person yet." The first guy said. I thought he looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him.

"You mean, you haven’t found a nice boy who’ll put up with your ugly ass face." The other corrected. They laughed. "Whatever, man. I have to get going. Congrats though."

They exchanged one of those barbarian half hugs, and the short guy got in his car and pulled away from the curb. I was still staring at the other, wondering where I knew him from. He turned around, hands in his pockets, and looked directly at me. I glanced away, closed my eyes, willed him to go away.

"Hey." He called.

I wondered how hard pretending to be deaf would be.

"Hey." He said again, coming closer, stepping into my yard. "I know you." He declared.

"Lucky you." I deadpanned.

He ignored me, stopping about five feet away. One of his hands came from his pocket to gesture with. "Yeah, you were a grade above me. Byun… Baekhyun?"

"Bingo." I muttered. It felt weird that I was sitting and he was standing. I didn’t correct it. "And who are you?"

"I’ll give you three guesses." He replied, half grinning.

"Usually people only say that when the answer is obvious."

"What if I give you three clues?" He bargained._ Just tell me your goddamn name_, I wanted to reply, but I didn’t. I was too exhausted and annoyed to even argue. He seemed to take my silence as acceptance.

"I was a year below you at Seoul High, have been your neighbor for… how long, now? And I was the guy who switched places with one of the cheerleaders at last year’s homecoming game."

I looked at him. I knew my neighbor also went to Seoul, but it had been a long while since I’d gotten a good look at him in the rare times we were both outside. We had ridden the bus together when we were younger, but not in high school. Then I’d gotten my driver’s license and the bus went by the wayside. It hardly needed saying that he had changed quite a bit since elementary school. "Wow. That was _you_?"

"That was me." He confirmed.

"Kudos to you, Park Chanyeol." I remembering his name now. Chanyeol grinned, either missing or ignoring the disdain in my voice.

"You didn’t even need the three guesses. That’s what I like to call making an impression."

I leaned my head against the trunk of the tree. "Yeah, if you want people to picture you in a cheerleading skirt when they hear your name."

He shrugged. "It’s cool. At least they won’t think of me as ordinary. Call me Chan or Yeol, though. Cheerleading skirts are acceptable, but ‘Chanyeol’ is not."

I considered smiling, but decided against it.

Chanyeol toed at the ground, disrupting the shredded remains of the patch of grass I’d decimated earlier.

"So, uh, you probably noticed that I’m having a grad party next door. You’re welcome to come, if you want."

There was the invite I wasn’t looking for.

"I’m good, thanks." I replied.

"Not one for parties?" He asked, like he actually cared. I looked up at him, searching his face for the catch. A moderately cute guy trying to sustain a conversation with me was not something that happened outside of drunken parties. Not because I was unattractive; I was pretty good looking, and my metabolism kept me within the range of traditionally "thin." But looks aside, it was more the air of standoffishness that made me unapproachable, and I knew it. I wanted Chanyeol to know it too, to get the hint and leave.

"Not ones with strangers, no."

_That was a lie._

I loved parties with strangers where hookups were never followed up, where names were never given, and the whole thing was forgotten a day or two later. They were usually the only kinds of parties I liked.

Chanyeol shoved his hands back into his pockets. "I bet you know some people. I invited some from your grade. Uh, Minseok, Jongin, Jongdae, Lay, _Taeyeon_-"

"Tae?" I blurted before my sense could stop me. Something akin to betrayal coursed through me, but I buried it swiftly, saving it for a time when I was alone. My former best friend was right next door and hadn’t bothered saying a word to me. How repulsive was I?

"Yeah." Chanyeol replied, tilting his head. "You guys are friends, right? I saw you together a lot."

Everything made sense then. He knew me through association with her. I almost laughed, but it would probably have come out sounding a little unhinged. Everyone knew me in relation to Taeyeon. Without her, what was I?

_Who was I?_

I folded my arms across my chest. "Thanks, but I’m gonna pass."

"Are you sure?"

"Positive."

Chanyeol shrugged. "Okay, then. I can’t force you." He took a step away, and I felt a surge of relief that he was going. But then he paused, and the relief evaporated. "I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable, but… are you okay?"

I scowled at him. "Yeah?"

"I just mean- you look like you’ve been crying, and I’ll stay here if you want. Keep you company. I’m in no hurry to get back, the party is kind of exhausting-"

"I’d rather you didn’t." I cut him off.

Chanyeol stopped. "Oh"” he said. "Okay." He nodded, and a lock of his tawny hair fell into his eyes. "I’ll, uh, see you around, then."

I didn’t respond. The moment he disappeared behind the palisade fence that separated his property from mine, I wiped at my eyes. I hadn’t been crying. I wasn’t lonely. I was okay.

I was okay.

_I was okay._

** _If you tell yourself something enough times, it becomes true._ **


	2. Chapter 2

> "You’ve always made the mistake of being yourself."
> 
> -Eugene Ionesco

What is it about the night that brings such peace and loneliness, such exquisite pain? When the moon hangs low in the sky, and the stars glimmer from thousands of light years away, separate from each other by just as great a distance of blackened void, there’s something that just sparks that feeling of insignificance, and a need to be valued by someone. The need to feel that another inconsequential speck of carbon-based life depends on you or cares about you drives people into the arms of their loved ones until the darkened void passes and light can ease the pain of existence once again.

Or so I considered, as I stared up at the stars while my dog did his business.

I didn’t have many talents, but I was damn good at being dramatic.

"Come on, Mong." I urged. "Pee, already."

My dog turned those baleful eyes on me, and I sighed. It was going to be one of those nights.

A door opened and shut somewhere in the night, and that somewhere was a lot closer than my silent prayers wished they would be. At the house next door, the motion-detecting light flicked on, and Park Chanyeol came wandering out, hands in the pockets of sweats slung low on his hips.

"Hey." He called. The fence between our houses only stretched halfway down the length of the driveway, so he wandered to the end. I made no move to acknowledge him, not that he seemed to care. "I, uh, saw you out here, and thought I’d come say hi. Hope that’s not weird."

I looked at him, resigning myself to the awkward pity-induced conversation that was bound to follow. "And if I said it was?"

"Then I’d apologize and go back inside."

It was tempting. It’s weird, would be all I would have to say. Two words, and he’d be gone. Yet, something held me back; something deeper than my instinctual need to avoid all forms of awkward human communication. Maybe it was that dreadful void that was eating my soul and making me want companionship, or whatever poetic metaphor I had come up with a minute ago.

"So you don’t have anything better to do on a Saturday night than sit up and wait for Mongryong to have to pee?" I asked, moving on with the conversation before I could regret not taking the opportunity to end it.

Chanyeol gave a half shrug. "My friends are great, but they’re tiring. With all the grad parties lately, it’s kind of nice to just stay home once in a while, get some peace and quiet."

I shifted my weight, tugged on the leash to pull Mongryong away from the flower bed by the mailbox. "So, why are you out here talking to me, then? It’s your night off from socializing. Go enjoy it."

"How do you know I’m not enjoying myself right now?" Chanyeol suggested, a grin tugging at his lips. He leaned against the last slat in the fence. "Maybe I enjoy talking to you."

In retrospect, laughing just then was probably rude and definitely self-deprecating, but I couldn’t help it.

"Really?" I inquired. "Based on what experience, exactly? Five minutes last week when I was half asleep?" I shook my head. "No, we both know what’s going on here."

Chanyeol tilted his head, genuinely curious. "We do?"

"Yes." I answered. "Pity." When Chanyeol looked unconvinced, I continued, "You think I’m some lonely-ass loser who cries himself to sleep at night under trees, and you’ve decided you’re going to bestow your friendship upon me, right?"

Chanyeol's subsequent stunned silence was all the confirmation I needed. I pulled at Mongryong's leash, turning to guide him back to the house. There was nothing else I wanted to say to Chanyeol. His pity was real, his friendliness was fake. I’d gotten good at telling the difference. After all, it’s not only the real knives that can cut you.

"Wait." Chanyeol said before I had even taken two steps. "You’ve got it wrong."

I wanted to keep walking, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it if I didn’t hear him out. It was just one of the other unfortunate things that came with being me. "Enlighten me." I replied, turning to face him again.

"I don’t see you as someone who needs my friendship." Chanyeol told me. His eyes were earnest, and maybe sad. "I see you as someone who comes out at night and looks up at the stars while my friends are all off getting shit-faced and high. I don’t know what you’re going through right now, or what you need, but I thought that maybe I could do with a friend like you. And that’s selfish, and I’m sorry." He shrugged. "If you don’t want to be friends, that’s fine. Just don’t flatter yourself thinking I pity you. I’ll never pity you." Chanyeol turned and walked away, tossing a light, "Goodnight," over his shoulder.

I reached into my well of cynical, deflecting replies and, for once, came up dry. With nothing to say, I merely stared at Chanyeol's retreating back until he disappeared into his house. Perhaps I didn’t need a job this summer; figuring out Park Chanyeol promised to be a sea of work in itself.


	3. Chapter 3

> _"I prefer cynical people. Nice guys grow on trees."_
> 
> _\- J Mascis_

  
The friendship that Taeyeon and I had was one you would expect to last forever. It was pillow forts and sleepovers, secrets whispered in the middle of the night, holding hands, and skipping to the playground. It was all the good things about middle school, discussing her crushes in excruciating detail, playing truth or dare, going to the movies without side-kicks. It was even high school, helping her train for the tennis team, cheering for her on first dates, nursing her through breakup after breakup.

Somewhere along the line, we had gone from being best friends to me being her best friend. Even so, I never expected our friendship to devolve into awkward glances down supermarket aisles.

I thought about running. I could pretend I hadn’t seen her and just slip away, but in the brief second we made eye contact, that plan was out. While I was considering whether I should abandon my basket and make a break for it, Taeyeon wandered over, the fake smile that I had learned to identify years ago plastered on her face.

"Hey, Baek." Her voice was too bright. Mine was too dull.

"Hi." I replied, more out of reflex than anything.

We stood there for a minute. I studied the labels on the tomato sauce, she studied my face.

"You look awful." Taeyeon commented. Her bluntness was normally one of the reasons I liked her, but not today. Today, it felt like she was saying, _"I leave you for a few months and you fall apart."_ Which wasn’t strictly untrue, but it hurt nonetheless.

"So do you." I snapped without thinking. Taeyeon looked surprised, and with reason. After all, she looked anything but awful, standing there pure-skinned and gorgeous in a gorgeous mood. I, on the other hand, seemed to be going for the just-rolled-out-of-bed look. I thought that I had pulled it off well, seeing as I literally just rolled out of bed before coming out to get milk, ice cream, and brownie mix. It had been a long night, and those three items couldn’t wait.

I had the irrational urge to hurt her, to cut her with my words the way her very presence still cut me. It didn’t work.

Taeyeon eyed my sweatpants with a frown. "Okay, well… nice seeing you."

Fake, I wanted to scream. Years ago, she would’ve joined me, laughing at the perfectly groomed girls with their tight clothes, thinking that they were the shit just because they plastered on four layers of makeup every morning and spent hours on their hair. I wondered when she had changed, and how I hadn’t noticed.

With a curt nod, I steered my cart around hers, then abandoned it in the next aisle over. I carried my items to the checkout, made my purchases quickly and with zero chit chat with the cashier, and escaped.

Every step I took away from Taeyeon seemed to make her grow larger in my mind. I kept thinking about the things we’d done together - all the happy memories, and the good times before things had just gone downhill. And then I thought about that too, and that was even worse.

I had walked to the store, and so I walked home. It was only a few blocks, but my arm was getting tired from holding the milk, and I could feel the frost on the outside of the ice cream carton melting and dripping through the seams of my bag. Nonetheless, when I went to pass Chanyeol's house, I stopped. It was irrational, spontaneous, and stupid, but I walked up his path and rang the doorbell.

Thankfully, Chanyeol was the one who answered it, not one of the other members of his family - a possibility I hadn’t considered until then.

_Irrational._

“Hi." Chanyeol said, looking a little tired and a lot surprised. His hair was ruffy, and his t-shirt wrinkled. "Um, what’s up?"

I opened my mouth to reply when I realized that I didn’t know why I was there in the first place. I was almost like I’d lived the last few minutes in a dream, and now I was being forced to explain something that kept slipping from my mind.

_Spontaneous._

"You wear glasses?" was the first thing that popped into my mind to say.

_Stupid._

"Uh, yeah." Chanyeol replied, his cheeks coloring as he ducked his head to adjust them. "I mean, I usually wear contacts, but they dry my eyes out, and I wasn’t really expecting company."

"Oh." I replied, embarrassed. “Sorry."

"It’s okay."

"I’m just, uh…" I glanced over to my house. "Gonna go now."

I turned to walk away. "What’s in the bag?" Chanyeol asked, a casual hand against the doorframe as he leaned out.

As if I had to check, I looked down at it. "Brownie mix and ice cream."

Chanyeol gave a half grin, not quite showing his teeth. "One of those boring days, huh?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"Want some company?" he offered.

"Sure."

_Irrational. Spontaneous. Stupid._

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be a strange story 👀


End file.
